New level of COH2 cynicism

The recent events involving Noun and the responses Relic has given us has truly made me sad and cynical. The game already felt shoddy with the bad 4v4 balance and the numerous bugs in the game. These recent events have really made me frustrated and hopeless over the future of this game.

I was going to write a topic about some balance things, but i felt that there was almost no point. SO what if people agree with me or not. With the general state of the game, it feels like many of our concerns haven't even been noticed.

What are you guys feeling

I feel they will get around to it on six months or so. Or maybe not. Maybe they didn't make a big enough profit from the WFA. Maybe relic should make an iPod edition of coh2 with micro transactions akin to FarmVille.

I myself can't bring myself to play. I never liked Ost but I do like OKW but I feel that I am just gaining undeserved ranks that I will just end up losing as soon as the next few months go by and relic actually fixes this mess.

This is exactly the reason why I gave up. For months whenever complaints were voiced the reply was "We will improve and we are excited about the future", yet not much improvement was visible from my end. It might have improved internally, it might have not, I can't say for I do not know. From what's publicly visible I can't see an improvement.
Yes, there were more patches in the recent time, BUT these were also more direly needed than ever. With most patches breaking the game in a part and then the hotfixes trying to fix it, of course breaking it in another spot.

Updates for July 22nd, 2014 was the major patch.
=> Updates for July 25th, 2014 was the fix for the Call-In costs
=> Updates for July 31st, 2014 was the fix for the Katyusha
=> Updates for August 14th, 2014 was the fix for the Luftwaffe crates

3 out of 3 patches to fix what the subsequent ones broke.

Update September 9th, 2014 was the major patch.
=> Updates for September 10th, 2014 was the fix for a few minor errors / bugs in the previous patch
=> Updates for September 15th, 2014 was the fix for the Assault Engineers
=> Update for September 24th, 2014 was the fix for the Kubelwagen, but also a change to OKW economy

2.5 out of 3 subsequent patches to fix what the subsequent ones broke.

So on that end, I cannot say I saw an improvement. If I look at the community interaction? Yes, there have been minor improvements, but once again nothing groundbreaking. With Cynthia added to the team there was more moderation on the official forum and more interaction on both ones. Yet once again, the interaction was mostly limited to damage control. When War Spoils was released nothing was noted for ages until it became a huge issue.

Bug wise / stability wise there was a massive decline. There was a massive spike of bugs introduced in the WFA release and quite a few still aren't fixed. The fixes to some introduced new ones (see Point 1). The stability was really bad upon WFA release, lots of people had freezes / drops. This improved slightly (drops turned to freezes, which I guess is an improvement). Performance wise it got quite a bit worse for WFA release and subsequent patches increased this downward spiral.


I guess Relic is improving internally so the communities criticism that they aren't sounds extra harsh. Yet vice versa, from the community viewpoint it is not getting better. Relic might improve, but with all those new projects they seem to also increase their internal pressure and the stakes overall, so this probably overshadows all improvements.

I know a few people at Relic are doing a great job (not meaning the rest isn't, but I don't know for the rest ), but it seems Relic seems to have bit off far more than they could chew. Instead of going for improvements and once that's settled go for new projects they seem to be trying to do all at once. I don't know if they need to do that due to financial incentives (need additional income from SP), so if they ever wanted to improve they would have to do it with all the other things right now. I just do not know that.

From my point of view they basically fail and fail and fail again, while at the same time saying they improve. You get your hopes up the first few times, but after a while you just start to turn cynical and sour. Since I recently noticed I thought more and more in a negative / cynical view about it, I just didn't want to bother with it anymore. I wish Braden / Matt / Peter / Noun / Jason / Greg the best for the future, but I just can't believe in Relic improving anymore.

The post above me sums it up for me.
The patches are only fixing what was broken because of the patch before.
Kubel patched- too strong so they revert it.
Katty patched- too strong so they revert it.

What has improved? Little things, but the overall game improvement since WFA is next to 0.

Hope was keeping me in the loop, but now I dont bother. Its not going to change.

On one hand i understand why they are leaving, made promises not kept, many bugs, bad balance and bad communication. I get that!

On the other hand i don't. If you say you love something then you stick to it.
Hey, i am also frustrated but i am still here because i love this flawed game and i am making the best of it.
Why is that? Because it is a game and nothing to serious. There are much bigger things in life to get upset with.

I hate to always relic to Riot Games, but that company does a fine job communicating with , even though they piss off many players as well. Riot has the benefit of having an enormous community that gives tons of feedback, and perhaps a bigger studio/support. '

The weird thing is, Relic, having a smaller playerbase, and perhaps a smaller studio, can really increase their, community interaction response. I don't see Relic working with the players close enough on some changes or feedback, which a studio with a smaller playerbase should

MilkaCow you sound angry. Do you like bears?

This is exactly the reason why I gave up. For months whenever complaints were voiced the reply was "We will improve and we are excited about the future", yet not much improvement was visible from my end. It might have improved internally, it might have not, I can't say for I do not know. From what's publicly visible I can't see an improvement.
Yes, there were more patches in the recent time, BUT these were also more direly needed than ever. With most patches breaking the game in a part and then the hotfixes trying to fix it, of course breaking it in another spot.

[...]

From my point of view they basically fail and fail and fail again, while at the same time saying they improve. You get your hopes up the first few times, but after a while you just start to turn cynical and sour. Since I recently noticed I thought more and more in a negative / cynical view about it, I just didn't want to bother with it anymore. I wish Braden / Matt / Peter / Noun / Jason / Greg the best for the future, but I just can't believe in Relic improving anymore.

+1
No need to post after that. Exactly my thoughts.

I think relic didnt produce the game that the fans wanted to have.

They are ignoring everything that many many fans have asked for since more than a year.

The fans asked fore many things:
a better faction and game design,
better Balance,
Fixing of all the bugs,
warspoils issues,
better communication,
a better commander System design(instead of spamming endless useless commanders that nobody uses)

Relic has ignored everything and many old CoH Veterans have already turn there backs on relic and left CoH2.

Relic adds changes to the game that nobody has asked ever for and made terrible desicions(Pay2Win, crazy warspoil System).

Now they come up with another USA-singleplayer campaign instead of Fixing the terrible state this game is in since the WFA release.

MilkaCow .......... Do you like bears?

In steins? Of course he does.

GOOD, GOOD..It is pointless to resist..The last jedi (stephenJF) will never prevail to rule the top ladder. Everything is going as planned, soon the top ladder will see the true power of the dark side with 100% abuse and cynicism.

Now they come up with another USA-singleplayer campaign instead of Fixing the terrible state this game is in since the WFA release.

You do realise that the SP campain will earn them money and bug fixing won't?

If you look at how CoH2 developed from its release they put a lot of effort in making the game more what the fans wanted.
With WFA they stirred it up again. That is bad and I don't like the state the game currently is in either. But sooner or later it will change for the better.
If we look back at vCoH it was exactly the same there. The MP part was in a good and balanced state and everytime they released an add on they broke it again. The impact the Brits had was absolutely comparable to how the OKW now is. It was very close to auto win. They managed to balance it and then came ToV and its new units wich even though they were just two units per faction wich could replace one allread existing unit screwed the game up so hard it really wasn't much fun. But after some time this was fixed.

The war spoils system IMHO is a vast improvement over the previous system... basically there was none. You had to buy camo and commanders. Geting the bulletins was just tedious. Grinding vs the computer provoking stupid situations. Or organising a friend for a 2v2 and boosting them. Complete BS IMHO. Just wasting time.
The war spoils system is far from perfect but its better than before.
BTW this is allmost exactly what the community or better parts of it asked for.

This IMHO is one of the huge problems. The CoH comunity is heterogenous. Its not the one big group in wich everybody wants the same thing and shares similar opinions. The really competative players and hardcore fans are very different form the bulk of the players. Who are casual players who like the game but will only play a few games per week. Not several per day. There is even quite a large group who only plays SP and doesn't care for MP at all.
SP is where the money is made. MP might sell you some extra copies but server upkeep and maintenance cost money. They tried to generate profit from the MP comunity by selling commanders... wich didn't really work. Now you can get them for free by the warspoils.

You do realise that the SP campain will earn them money and bug fixing won't?

If you look at how CoH2 developed from its release they put a lot of effort in making the game more what the fans wanted.
With WFA they stirred it up again. That is bad and I don't like the state the game currently is in either. But sooner or later it will change for the better.
If we look back at vCoH it was exactly the same there. The MP part was in a good and balanced state and everytime they released an add on they broke it again. The impact the Brits had was absolutely comparable to how the OKW now is. It was very close to auto win. They managed to balance it and then came ToV and its new units wich even though they were just two units per faction wich could replace one allread existing unit screwed the game up so hard it really wasn't much fun. But after some time this was fixed.

The war spoils system IMHO is a vast improvement over the previous system... basically there was none. You had to buy camo and commanders. Geting the bulletins was just tedious. Grinding vs the computer provoking stupid situations. Or organising a friend for a 2v2 and boosting them. Complete BS IMHO. Just wasting time.
The war spoils system is far from perfect but its better than before.
BTW this is allmost exactly what the community or better parts of it asked for.

This IMHO is one of the huge problems. The CoH comunity is heterogenous. Its not the one big group in wich everybody wants the same thing and shares similar opinions. The really competative players and hardcore fans are very different form the bulk of the players. Who are casual players who like the game but will only play a few games per week. Not several per day. There is even quite a large group who only plays SP and doesn't care for MP at all.
SP is where the money is made. MP might sell you some extra copies but server upkeep and maintenance cost money. They tried to generate profit from the MP comunity by selling commanders... wich didn't really work. Now you can get them for free by the warspoils.

While I do not totally disagree, I have some problems accepting that they spent that much effort making COH2 what the fans wanted. They put a lot of effort developing the p2w approach that they later abandoned, and they spent the time up until the release of WFA undoing the screwups they had done earlier, like infantrycombat. They basically spent the time correcting design failures that noone requested, as far as I can see. The "they need SP to fund development" argument is a poor one, in my oppinion, just like the "they need DLC commanders to fund development" argument was. I think accepting such excuses will just encourage Relic to do the same mistakes over and over again, untill they finally manage to kill of this once great franchise. Id rather see Relic realise theire mistakes than repeating them.

I think most of you guys seem so self entitled to just voice your concerns and the next patch should fix everything you said or else "There is no hope im leaving". Relic has done an amazing job in tweaking the game so far and will surely do some redesigns on complex game systems after AA is done. Coh2 didnt sell in amazingly good so given the amount of support so far of the game is pretty incredible.

Can't stand that important and well known community people are using their position to spam and sob on Relic's stream that you are quitting their game and everything is bad and hopeless. If you don't like the game just quit or go back to coh1 but please stop making a scene about it because its not gonna do anything other than make you and the community look bad.

Nothing to see here, just another developer gone bad because of their publisher, I hope SEGA burns to the ground. Fuck you Sonic.

hmm I have to say that Relic were considerably worse at supporting their game while under THQ than they have been lately.

Their post launch support has definitely improved a lot but still leaves a lot to be desired.

I think most of you guys seem so self entitled to just voice your concerns and the next patch should fix everything you said or else "There is no hope im leaving". Relic has done an amazing job in tweaking the game so far and will surely do some redesigns on complex game systems after AA is done. Coh2 didnt sell in amazingly good so given the amount of support so far of the game is pretty incredible.

Can't stand that important and well known community people are using their position to spam and sob on Relic's stream that you are quitting their game and everything is bad and hopeless. If you don't like the game just quit or go back to coh1 but please stop making a scene about it because its not gonna do anything other than make you and the community look bad.

Some random guy who just got the game telling every respected player that leaves the scene that he's making a drama and should just shut the fuck up.

Drama is only stupid when it's not true, and the story about Relic and cynicism is true, so I suggest you don't reply to stuff you don't know anything about.

Some random guy who just got the game telling every respected player that leaves the scene that he's making a drama and should just shut the fuck up.

Drama is only stupid when it's not true, and the story about Relic and cynicism is true, so I suggest you don't reply to stuff you don't know anything about.

+1

Let's keep the temperature down please.